Near-epic adventure, pt. 1

Yesterday, Joe and I went on a near-epic cross country adventure. On Wednesday, Joe completed a true epic cross country adventure when he hiked 4.6 miles through the woods and over a couple of high ridges, leaving from our back door and showing up at the Light Morning community. In order to visit our friends at Light Morning, it usually requires a 35-40 minute drive around 3 sides of a rectangle as there is no direct road between us (this is because of the "high ridges", aka mountains, I mentioned earlier). For several years, we've thrown around the idea that "we could hike from our place to yours!", but haven't actively pursued it. But, with the help of my little brother's GPS, Joe made it a reality. He completed the grueling hike in around 3 hours. However, he decided that there were probably some spots along the way where he could have found a better path. This brings us back to the near-epic adventure in which I also participated yesterday. Before returning the GPS to my brother (also Joe, btw), Joe wanted to re-hike some of the stickier portions of the trail, so we had his mom drop us and Wilson off at a point roughly 3.5 miles from our place.

The very first part of the hike was scaling one of the ridges. I'm a horrible estimator, but I would say it was at least a 30 degree slope, and we gained ~500 feet in a very short linear distance. Joe kept assuring me that was the toughest part of the whole hike, and he was right, and a good thing it was too. Good grief I am out of shape! From their the hike was much easier as we mostly followed the ridge we'd just climbed. Of course, we were crossing over many people's properties, sometimes right through their back yards, but we never ran into anyone. Three hours and all of my energy reserves later, we popped up in our own back yard, right by the chicken house.

Here are some photos of an old homestead we passed by in a little valley. There must have been 8-10 little outbuildings, at least. I didn't venture into the main house, but peering through the windows I saw walls papered in newspaper/magazine pages, an old bed and an old treadle sewing machine, surrounded by piles and piles of junk.